Same Old Lang Syne
by phantomwriter05
Summary: A brooding and haunted Frank Walker returns from Vietnam and wanders the lonesome ruins of the World's Fair grounds on a Snowy Christmas Eve.


_"CP this is Echo 6, Fire Mission, Fire Mission!"_

 _"Echo 6 … give your position, over!"_

 _"I've got Charlie over the walls, we're being overrun, Broken Arrow!"_

 _"Echo 6, we're inbound, over!_

 _"Broken Arrow, I repeat, Broken Arrow!"_

 _"Copy that!"_

 _"Wait there're men still on the ground …"_

 _"Call'em off!_

 _"Danger Close!"_

 _"Walker, call those sons of bitches off! Sixth platoon is still out there."_

 _"They're right on top of us!"_

 _"FRAAANK!"_

The crack of pool balls startled the young man awake. His eyes were glazed and confused as he kept his head on a swivel. The deafening explosion of automatic assault fire, artillery, and the roar of the Phantoms' jet engines skimming the jungle canopies were supplanted by the soft sorrow in the voices of Dee Clark lamenting about the raindrops falling from his eyes. The bar room was dark and secluded, leaving only the neon lights of the old Rock-A-Billy ads behind the bar to guide drunks from the door to the counter and reverse. When the youth strained his ears, he could still hear what was left in the whispered promises made during that era. Ideals of the future placed in the heads of the kids that had grown up with the hopes for lives that at least their parents had. Most would settle for less now. Race riots, drugs, protests, Vietnam, it had all blocked their road, forced detours into the dark forests that they weren't supposed to go. Now, all that was left of the generation that came after the greatest of them were vagabonds and gypsy peddlers who had gotten lost in search for that promise land of tomorrow … lost in search of a Tomorrowland.

 **New York City**

 _December 24th, 197-_

Frank Walker had been home for two weeks now. But he had only slept for one of them, and had been sober for none. When he left Saigon he had barely said a word. It was a blur of "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" and very rarely an "I don't recall, sir." It was hard to find a transfer to a different unit after "Ripcord" and even harder to find a unit that would take him, not after what had happened in the A Shau Valley. He signed a couple of papers, mostly agreements that he would not talk about the things that had happened. It was papers and red tape he thought he'd be doing a lot less of after leaving ... where he came from.

He could've gone anywhere in the world after his discharge, and on the Army's dime. He thought only a second of returning from where he left, returning to _her_. But it came and went. Eventually, some other kid, a private missing three fingers, was headed back home to Harlem. The idea didn't seem bad to Frank at the time. He thought he could go around and see all the sights in New York that he couldn't see the first time when he was a kid, lugging a rocket pack around.

It all seemed like a good idea till he saw the city from the airplane window. His eyes were drawn to that one spot. There, to the place where it all begin. In those ruins from hundreds of miles in the air, somewhere in there was the place where his life had been changed forever. Where he first met them … met her. Memories of that place, of that first smile as he raced through the clouds and in between the shining skyscrapers, on a homemade rocket as quick as dreams filled him. They had all came flooding back to him in a flash. But seared into his mind since that day and every other, was that glimmer in her eyes, as she looked up and watched him. Glistening in that moment, was not happiness, was not pride in being right about him. It was a look of amazement, of wonder. It was all he had ever wanted to see since he had first cracked open a "Rocketeer" comic book and saw himself in the pages.

She was all he ever wanted.

By the time the plane had landed, Time Square, The Empire State, the Brooklyn Bridge, it didn't matter so much anymore. He bought his room cheap across the street from the fair grounds. When he was first here it was beyond the wildest dream of a young boy that he'd ever be able to afford a room in a place like this. But returning after so many years, he found that a place like this was mostly a 'has been' establishment that had in room entertainment that you could choose from in the lobby. Sequenced tops, short skirts, and leopard print panties, they were the kind of girls that Frank had seen on furlough in Saigon. Maybe they were more expensive, more diverse in skin tone, but overall still as dirty. He thought about it, especially when he saw the dark haired one, with the long legs and Manchester accent. But when he closed his eyes he saw the purity in her freckled smirk, the curiosity and confidence in her green eyes, the girly ribbons always tied in her glossy straightened locks. He felt ashamed then, ashamed of the thought, of the need for a service like the one he contemplated. She was all he could think about, and he wouldn't dream of touching other women like that, not while she was there in his mind. Even now she was still holding him back, forever haunting his mind, spirit, and soul.

Frank Walker could go anywhere and do anything, and yet his experience in New York was secluded still to one block. When he got to his room at the break of dawn he slept, and when he awoke in the afternoon he crossed the street and sat in the abandoned building where a man named Nix told him no and she told him yes. There he'd think of her, of his life, and every mistake he made along the way since she first held his hand. He'd wait there till the bars opened.

Then he'd think of what had happened over there, what went wrong at "Ripcord" and all the faces and the names of the son's, the husbands, and the brothers that he had led to the slaughter in the A Shau Valley. He'd take one drink to honor their memory, then one to forget the mistake that cost them their lives. Then, he'd toast their courage, and then he'd wash away the idiots for ever following a stupid kid who should've been chasing skirts in High School, or dreams in the city of tomorrow, not leading men in a fight he had no business being in. They were damn fools, every one of them, for following a kid that had only joined up to run from all the pain he created for himself in this city, on this street when he was still stupid enough to believe that dreams and hard work meant a damn to a future he desperately wanted to be a part of.

The bartender was the tough Stanton Island type. He'd been here to serve the drinks to the first men who had been laid off in '29. He had kept the place open long enough to give the boys who came by after "December 7, 1941" some liquid courage before walking into that recruiting office. And he was there to serve drinks to them when they came back on V.E. Day and V.J. Day. Quinn had been there a long time, and knew when a man needed a drink, and when he needed to pull someone off Satan's tit. He never warned the scruffy kid who was too young to have that kind regret in his eyes. He looked on the olive drab army jacket with the screaming eagle of the Airborne on his shoulder and an army issue wool cap that had dark Grecian curls poking out and shook his head. Quinn wouldn't say anything, wouldn't look for a fight, he simply stop pouring Frank's glass. And when he was called, he ignored him. It took an hour of going in and out of consciousness before it occurred to Frank that he wouldn't be getting his drink.

If it was one thing that could be said about Frank Walker, it was that he didn't know when to take a hint.

Even though Diana Ross had begged him to stop in the name of love, the young officer left some pension money on the counter and slipped out into the frigid night. The music of the bar followed him out as he stepped onto the cold Manhattan sidewalks. On the snowy Christmas Eve there wasn't a soul out in the wintery mix that fell from the dark impenetrable sky cast over the crowded island. Stuffing hands in his pair of old jeans he began walking to the usual spot. All around him in the concentration of glass, concrete, and neon flashes the air seemed to be smoking in the cold, like the entire steel and granite jawed beast's breath was visible with each giant exhale on the winter's night. As he passed across the street, his silhouette was cast in strange reflections of red, yellow, and finally green on the earliest hours of morning that very few knew.

Walking the slippery path of ruined, rusted, booths and empty buildings, Frank passed under street lamp. Puffy and regret poisoned eyes watched with drunken fascination as the silhouettes of midnight snowflakes cast shadows on the crunchy quad of dead grass and on the side of the abandoned buildings. When he closed his eyes he could still hear the ghostly chortle of children's laughter and the phantom chorus of "It's a Small, Small world" echoing hollowly in the phantom remains of a bright sunny day that lived only in his memories. But when Frank opened his eyes he found all of the pomp and heraldry of what was to come in the dilapidated structures, the faded framed posters of coming attractions that were busted, or covered by advertisements for double features at the Time Square porno theaters. Somehow it seemed only fitting to find it this way after half a decade since he walked these paths.

It's surprising what you remember when you're young. Frank Walker couldn't remember what his first ice cream flavor was, when he hit his first home run, or what his first "A" subject at school was. But till this day he still knew how to get to where he was going. He knew what the ground felt like, the tilt of the metal rods on the eroded guard railings, and how the ground slanted on the small mound where what he was looking for sat. Time and the New York weather had not been kind through the years to his concrete bench that overlooked the waterway into the "Small World" ride. Accumulated snow sat on the edges of the tilted flat surface. Running down the middle was weathered cracks that threatened to split the bench in two by the next two years of frosts.

When he looked down at the bench he saw a young boy sitting there. He was chubby, young, and depressed. He wore his baseball jacket over his stripped t-shirt. His head was propped on his hands that rested on his rejected invention that was stuffed in his mother's old USO duffle from when she was a Rockefeller Rockette. He watched the kid for a long moment, his sad, green eyes cast toward the entrance to the tunnel. Reaching into his jacket pocket, Frank drew out a flask and unscrewed the top. He pulled the flask toward his stubbled face but halted. For a long time he stared into the abyss of darkness that lay behind the boarded up entrance that had once taken him to a place of dreams and wonder. Now the only thing that floated through that tunnel was trash, flyers, and used rubbers.

" _Don't turn around."_

The boy did just that. He'd take the scorning for doing so if he could just have one last look at an Angel. But for Frank, he didn't turn around. He simply took a long draft of the Scottish Whiskey as he stared straight into the abyss. He settled next to the kid, and back to back with his angel. He could still hear them; still feel the emotions of anxiety and enchantment in the strange way she talked. Beautiful, intelligent, and exotic, everything a poor farm boy from the upper Hudson wasn't. But she could've told him anything in that moment and the boy would've done it. He took another tug on the flask as she gave the kid the pin. He could've called him so many things at that moment as he watched the boy take off. But he didn't say a word, even if he could; there was no stopping that kid from making the most terrible mistake of his life.

He watched that mistake wander around his bench and stand right in front of him. He met her green eyes as she looked down at him. She was as beautiful as he remembered her being, as she would always be long after he joined the rest of these old ruins of the once was and never will be. Frank watched her smile her cute, impish, flash of pearly white teeth at him. She offered him her hand the way she had once done. She'd take him to the future. It must have been this place, the old emotions welling up inside him from just being here … but he reached out to her. Despite everything that happened, finding out who she was, losing his father, fighting in Vietnam, and calling in an airstrike that he should never have lived through, when his angel reached for him, Frank Walker still reached back.

But just as their hands were about to touch, he felt nothing. In a blink of an eye she was gone, faded away like the midnight snowflakes, faded away like this place, faded away like dreams that the boy had ran off to achieve. In a heart's beat it was all gone, and he was nothing more than one more lost vagabond all alone reaching for something that was never really there in the first place.

For just a moment he was back at the portal, and felt that old familiar pain of the day he had left. Then, quietly the young officer lowered his hand and gave a hard swallow that choked down the last of old emotions for the night. He was quiet for a long moment before he sighed tiredly in the closing moments of a tour he knew he should never had gone on. Placing a hand in his jacket pocket, Frank took one last draft of his flask, cherishing the numbness of already drunken senses.

But then he opened his eyes.

The black cold of the filthy ruins and trash guttered waterway disappeared. The snow still tickled his nose and dampened his wool cap. But Frank couldn't see it. He squinted and covered his eyes with a forearm as his vision went from a great dark blur, to one big bright one. He quickly stood up and looked around himself in utter disbelief.

From the desolation of the urban decay, Frank Walker found himself standing in the center of a Wheat field. As far as the eye could see he looked out at the languid swaying of golden stalks in the gentle breeze of the most perfect autumn morning. It was a sight he had known, seen a million times. He knew it well, because he had chosen it personally for the program. It was a snap shot, a moment in time captured forever.

It had been a late October morning when a boy had crashed his rocket pack outside the city. His frustrations of all his destroyed hard work halted when turning around to find how far he had gone off course. He remembered that boy just looking on in amazement of the view he had found amongst the swaying crops, forever reminding him of where he had come from. Looking on that glass and steel monument to what he was a part of, what he was trying to do had wiped away all the angst and negativity of his failures of the past week. When he got back he had grabbed his angel and told her about his spot. That early morning, carrying her over the miles of wheat as he flew them out, he relayed to her that if she wanted to bring recruits to the city, all she had to do was show them what he had found. Spending the time together just before sunrise, she had been very skeptical about his discovery. That was till she sat next to him on the tractor and watched as the first golden rays pushed back the violet and orange water colors of the coming dawn and saw the reflection of light glint and glimmer off their futuristic sanctuary. He couldn't remember when it happened, being distracted by the view every time, but when he came to his senses he had found that his angel had taken his hand as they had looked out at the view.

Since then it had been more than just a recruiting ad, an introduction to the possibilities of everything they had been trying to achieve. It was more than that for Frank. This place, this unexpected taste of heaven had been more than just an innocent discovery. Once, a long time ago, before it was a stupid commercial filled with am tracks and rocket ships, it had been his place … their place.

Feeling something cold and metallic in his pocket, Frank wrapped his fingers in snare. When he opened his palm he was surprised to find a tiny metallic pin. It was a familiar bombastic blue "T" outlined in white on a field of orange. To say he was shocked was an understatement. He hadn't seen a pin like this in a long time, not since he gave Nix back the pin that his angel had given him. He was completely confused and baffled as to how it got in his pocket in the first place.

"Hello Frank."

The soft accented voice stopped him cold. His mind, heart, and breath were out of synch and unresponsive. A prickle ran up his spine and all of him went rigid as he stood still amongst the swaying stalks. Eventually by some divine compulsion he slowly turned around.

In the distance the utopia of every dreamer, inventor, and creator spanned the blue and golden horizon. They were great towers and arches of metal and glass, tall spires reaching out toward the heavens, never achieving, but always striving, tomorrow looking brighter than yesterday. And silhouetted against the streamlined skyline was a figure he could never forget, that haunted his every waking night, and whose ghost alcohol could not chase away. Her glossy dark hair was in regal curls. The girl's freckled pallid face was still fashioned from the hands of god himself. A supple black coat covered a long, elegant, silken gown of silver that had seen the inside of an exclusive party for up and coming bright minds on the Upper East Side.

Their eyes met as the glimmer of the sun glinted off the steel behind her. The flask slipped from his suddenly slackened grip and fell to the cold hard ground below. The action halted her advance for a beat. Her eyes squinting, looking for any sign of recognition, any sign of the boy the girl had once knew in the hardened and haunted eyes of the soldier in front of her. She feared he might have forgotten her.

But she was wrong.

Frank Walker had not forgotten her, never her. He remembered the fear that had confronted him when asked if his rocket pack worked. But all it took was just the tiniest of her smiles for him to find his strength, to build a fortress of self-confidence in her emerald eyes. The feeling of jubilee in his young heart when she placed the pin his hand, the knowledge that she had come back for him, she cared. His mind, body, and soul were soaked in a deluge of a thousand other memories of her smile, of her curious eyes, and girly bows. The picture he kept of her in his breast pocket in the jungles of Vietnam. There were many questions asked of him by his men, if she had been some little sister or cousin, and his only reply was that she was someone special. But the one thing that had strobed in his mind the most was lying in the burned out tree line of his platoon's defensive perimeter. Bleeding, utterly alone, and surrounded by the bodies of the men he had failed. He remembered reaching for that same picture of her as the buzz of the Huey's blades passed overhead. His fingers were just grazing the paper's edge. He had needed to hold her, to see her one last time before he surrendered to the darkness to join the rest of his men. But it was all for naught as the medevac chopper blew it from reach to settle in the flaming ruins of a bamboo tree. As the medics pulled him out, he remembered calling her name as she burned away with the rest of his men.

Now it was the cruelest joke of all to have this pin in hand, and to see her here, in their spot. Even after all these years she was reaching for him. But after everything that had happened to him, what he had been through, Frank couldn't do it anymore. He couldn't reach back and have her disappear again. Not now … not tonight.

He felt all of his strength leave him in that moment as a hurricane of painful memories and old emotions tore through him. With a crunch on the frozen ground, Frank fell to his knees in front of the girl. She called to him but he just shook his head. He felt the cold wind of the ruined yesterdays on his face as the brightness of tomorrow called to him in the distance, all the while the girl of his dreams stood so close to him. Frank Walker was torn and broken, knowing he didn't belong in either world and nor had he the right to feel the way he did about a girl who could not feel the same. He'd give up the illusion if only he had the strength to let go of the pin, to let her go.

With a pained expression on the girl's face, she whispered his name and reach down to touch the face of the man that was chest level to her. The drunken haze in the young officer's eyes slowly cleared soberly when he felt the slender cold hands gently brush his stubbled cheeks. He darted up at the girl who looked visibly hurt at the state of the handsome youth she had cherished so deeply and impossibly once. With each graze and pet a spark of life touched his haunted expression as tears welled. For the first time in a longtime he not dared wander into a dream of the heart, nor in a drunken hallucination of what weighed heavily on his mind. The girl was real this time …

She was real.

"Athena …"

He waited till she nodded the last confirmation. He copied the motion till tears ran freely from his eyes. Then quietly he let all of the disappointments of the truths that a boy had feared, the pain of the led and steel of war that lay embedded in a young man's body, and the horror of a the wrong decision at the wrong time that has gotten his men killed, he let all of it crowd around him. Then with quiet sobs he buried his tired face into the chest of his best and only friend, his arms wrapping around her waist, pulling her to him tightly. Athena didn't say anything, she did not cry, did not back away from the man. She did what she always had done, and would only ever do for Frank Walker. She ran her hands over the top of his wool cap, pulling his face to her chest, and laid her head on top of his.

As they embraced, the orange, white, and blue pin fell from Frank Walker's hand. It tapped against the aluminum flask before joining it on the frozen snowy ground. Then in that moment, in the ruins of the old fair grounds, next to the bench that over looked the waterway that led to the tunnel of tomorrow …

Frank and Athena were back were they first started.

* * *

 **Acknowledgments**

 _"Same Old Lang Syne" - Dan Fogelberg_

 _"Raindrops" - Dee Williams_

 _"Stop in the Name of Love" - The Supremes_


End file.
